‘Partners for Peace’ merges with Council for the National Interest Foundation
Posted January 6, 2010
Washington DC, January 6– The boards of directors of Partners for Peace and the Council for the National Interest Foundation are delighted to announce that at the end of December 2009, the two organizations merged and henceforth Partners for Peace will operate as “A project of the CNI Foundation.”
Jerri Bird, founder and President of Partners for Peace, said she was very happy that, under the terms of the merger, the CNI Foundation has made a solid commitment to continue running Partners for Peace’s flagship program, the “Jerusalem Women Speak” tours. These tours bring Christian, Jewish, and Muslim women from Jerusalem to speak about their experiences, their dreams, and their pro-peace activism to communities in many parts of the United States.
Helena Cobban, the recently appointed Executive Director of the CNI Foundation and its sister organization, the Council for the National Interest, said she was enthusiastic about the merger because of the complementarity between the “Jerusalem Women Speak” tours and the CNI Foundation’s existing projects.
“Like Partners for Peace, the CNI Foundation has a long track record of working to educate the U.S. public about conditions in the Arab-Israeli arena and the requirements of a just and sustainable peace there,” she said.
The Foundation’s existing projects include “Political Pilgrimage” study tours that take U.S. citizen-diplomats to various countries in the Middle East, the “Fair policy, Fair discussion” blog, and the “CNI: Jerusalem Calling” internet-radio show. “All these projects,” Ms. Cobban said, “have great potential for constructive synergy with the ‘Jerusalem Women Speak’ tours.”
She welcomed and embraced the specifically female dimension of Partners for Peace’s work, and expressed her appreciation and gratitude to Mrs. Bird and all the other members of Partners’ board and staff who have built the organization’s programs up to such an effective level over the past 20 years.
Ms. Cobban noted that the merger should also have strong financial benefits, allowing the total administrative costs for running all the CNI Foundation’s projects—old and new—to be consolidated, thereby maximizing the proportion of resources put into actual programming.
The CNI Foundation, like Partners for Peace, is a 501(c)3 organization, meaning that donations to it are tax-deductible under U.S. law.
Ms. Cobban said that the CNI Foundation has already started planning for the 17th “Jerusalem Women Speak” tour, under the rubric of its constituent project Partners for Peace. The 17th tour will take three “Jerusalem Women Speak” participants around areas of the southern Midwest in April 2010.
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For more information, contact Helena Cobban, Executive Director, CNI Foundation, (202) 863-2951, helena@cnionline.org.
